


promises promises

by impossibletruths



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Metaphorical Engagements If You Squint, Missing Scene, Quentin's Mind Goes A Mile A Minute, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: At some point when he wasn't paying attention, Eliot stopped wearing his wedding ring. No matter how hard he tries, Quentin can't un-notice it.





	promises promises

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Обещания](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19964326) by [fandom_The_Magicians_2019](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_The_Magicians_2019/pseuds/fandom_The_Magicians_2019), [Yamanari_Tai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yamanari_Tai/pseuds/Yamanari_Tai)



> There's a point after Arielle's death that Eliot stops wearing his wedding ring. Naturally, I have a hundred and one ideas why, so here's one of them. Set (obviously) during A Life In The Day.

“El,” he says sometime between finishing the ninth row and starting the tenth. The weather has started to turn, finally, and today is grey-cold for the first time in months, like they crossed the line between summer and autumn sometime in the night. They’ll be longer now, those nights, even though Fillory doesn’t, as far as he understands it, actually orbit a star, so the seasons are more about whim and fancy than any actual astronomical law. He’s not sure what Ember and Umber were on when they plotted out that particular bit of pseudo-astronomy, and having met them he’s not sure he wants to know.

Anyways, the curiosity of Fillorian weather patterns doesn’t bother him quite as much as the reality––his hands ache with the misty chill, faint but bone deep. At some point, and quite without realizing, he’s started getting old, feeling those sorts of twinges that seemed the purview of the elderly. Funny how that happens.

Eliot––marking down tiles and keeping half an eye on Teddy, who is locked deep in mock-battle with one of the broad trees at the edge of this clearing that has become home, somehow, in the midst of all their great and grand and wholly mundane questing––hums. When Q glances back at him both brows are raised, invitational.

He’s getting old too, just a little. The sketchbook promise of future lines have begun to set in around his eyes, the kind made from and for smiling. They crinkle now, when Q looks up at him.

He doesn’t really stop to consider the question before he asks it. Or, well, he’s been considering it long enough that he thinks thinking about it any longer is just going to twist him up in more knots, and he’s trying mostly to avoid that, the knotting and the uncertainty, so.

“Um. When did you stop wearing your wedding ring?”

“Oh.”

Eliot’s hand moves, aborted, like he’s going to fiddle with it in that way that he does––or did anyway; long, clever fingers twisting the silver band––and then stops short. He frowns and there are lines there too, equally faint, a promise of yet-to-come.

(His thirties look good on him, like he’s found a balance between his usual airy panache and this slower, sedate life. Like all that armor he dons isn’t armor anymore, or not _just_ armor anyways, like it’s become part of him instead of eclipsing him, so that he’s still Eliot underneath, whole and entire instead of shining through the cracks.)

He shrugs then, languid and loose and at odds with his expression, which is sheepish of all things, like he’s been caught doing something he thought he might get away with.

It’s a kind of familiar expression, actually. He says, “Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that,” Q echoes. His brows arc to mirror Eliot, who hesitates, and Q thinks maybe he’s going to be serious for a moment, right until he takes an extra little breath before answering, the kind that says he’s changed what he was going to say _right_ before he says it, and Q starts frowning before he even gets the words out.

“Do you think Fen will mind?”

“Do I think–– Eliot.”

“It’s been like, what, at least a decade? So––”

“El, if you don’t want to answer you don’t have to.”

“No, I mean it, because if you think she’ll mind...”

He’s not sure when this started twisting towards an argument, because he didn’t mean it to, and he _knows_ Eliot’s teasing, mostly, because it’s all there in his face, the quirking smile and the smooth parceling out of wit, only–– Only, he’s been thinking about it for, for days, since he noticed, which is only gods-know how long after he took it off in the first place, and it feels like a change, maybe, like. It’s his wedding ring, for fuck’s sake. They haven’t spent ten years here, now, only for Eliot to decide on a whim, _hmm, time I get rid of this_ because Eliot never does anything on a whim, even when he likes to pretend he does.

“Whatever,” Q mutters, sullen now. He finishes the row in silence, except for the chill wind through the trees, except for the delicate clinking of the chimes, except for the intermittent smack of Teddy’s stick against the bark of a poor, unsuspecting tree.

The quiet familiarity of it all cools his not-quite temper a bit, enough to loosen his shoulders as he starts the next row, fingers cold-sore.

“I thought––” says Eliot behind him, and then stutters to a stop. Q doesn’t look around, just lays the next tile, and the one after that, and another three before Eliot manages to set his thoughts in order. “Living life here, right?”

Quentin sets down another tile and says, “Oh.”

It’s… the trouble, see, the trouble with living in a world where they could be _done_ in an instant––not like, dead-done but finished-done, beauty of all life shown and key to greater magic found, quest complete, _finit_ ––is the enormous, unanswered question of what come next. If anything comes at all. Like, at any second could be it, and then, what? Does Fillory spit them out? Does it keep them, quest half-finished, key in hand and unable to get it to everyone else? Do they just keep growing older and older and older and withering to nothing, memories for their still-unborn friends to keep? What about his son, his family, the life he’s somehow, miraculously, accidentally built for himself over these past years?

And Quentin’s personal favorite, which he loves to turn over and over and over again like one of their little clay tiles late at night when the only thing awake are the Fillorian version of fireflies and his own buzzing anxiety: would Eliot stay, if their leg of the quest were finished?

So, okay. So maybe, actually, he doesn't need to worry about that last one.

Eliot hums. “Yeah.”

Q turns around then, finally, looks up at him. His face has gone uncertain-soft while Q’s been staring resolutely at the half-finished mosaic, an expression intimately familiar after so long tripping over each other, elbows and too-big feelings folded into the confines of the cottage, the clearing, the quest. Q sighs and sets down the last tile of the row.

“I don’t think Fen would mind.”

“Me neither.” Eliot pauses. Then, curious and almost macabre, “I wonder if she’d mourn me. Is mourning me? Will mourn?”

“Probably.” She’s sweet, Fen, and she cares, and he knows Eliot cares too because he smiles, small but bright-crooked.

It only lasts a moment, then it twists from bright to bitter, just a little, just at the edges. “She’d be better off without me, anyways.”

“Hey.”

“No, really. I was a terrible husband. And father.”

“You’re not,” Q reminds him, because sometimes he needs reminding. El stares at him for a moment, and Q stares back, and wonders if maybe now, if he said it, if maybe Eliot would believe him for once. The trouble with circular arguments––and they have a _number_ of circular arguments, because they’re all folded together in the cottage and the clearing and the quest––is that you get as good at refuting a point as you do making one. One of those things about life he’d never really thought about until he was living it, y’know?

Off to the side, Teddy yells out a word he certainly should _not_ know at his age, and they’re caught staring at each other, Quentin’s eyebrows climbing ever higher until Eliot snorts, shattering the moment.

“No, you’re right. I’ve been doing a fantastic job, actually.” He walks the line between honesty and sarcasm, but Quentin’s inclined to believe he means it more than he doesn’t. He should, anyways. And, yeah, maybe he’s a little biased in thinking that, but still. Teddy’s their kid, his and Arielle’s and Eliot’s too. He’s allowed to be proud of them. Of everything they’ve done, of everything they've done together.

“El.” He reaches a hand out, and Eliot relinquishes his a moment later, chalk stained and a little dusty but well-kept as ever, nails clean and evenly trimmed. Q takes the opportunity to run his thumb along the patch of skin around his ring finger, lighter where it’s tanned around the missing band. Eliot’s expression flickers, and Q can’t hide his smile. He doesn’t bother trying. “I’m glad.”

“Yeah?”

Quentin kisses the patch of untanned skin, just next to his knuckle, and then turns his hand over to kiss his open palm, mostly to watch how Eliot's mouth opens, just a little, soft and shocked, like they’ve been here ten years, at each other’s back and under each other’s skin and he _still_ can’t believe Q might do something as simple and easy as kiss him, as if he doesn’t know Q just kind of always wants to kiss him, any part of him, just to know that he’s there.

Q smiles up at him, and then––because he doesn’t really have words to stay to explain the hot sweep of warmth and fondness through his chest, because sometimes words get in the way of the other stuff, because it’s really _fucking_ nice that they've been here ten years and Eliot makes that little shocked, soft face when Q kisses his hand––he says, “Yeah.”

And he lets go of Eliot and starts the next row of the Mosaic.

**Author's Note:**

> come shout about the magicians with me on tumblr at [impossibletruths](http://impossibletruths.tumblr.com)


End file.
